Sexuality and the Black Church: A Womanist Perspective

Rating:
Summary: Has Valid Points, But Gets Off Track
Review: Douglas tells the truth about American history when she reveals how black people were mistreated during slavery. This book shows that sexuality was used to oppress black people, the white culture exists only as the non-white culture is oppressed, day to day social struggles are a microcosm of the macrocosm (for example, "gangsta" rap is a response/result of dehumanizing social influences such as institutions and systems). But the book gets off track when Douglas condones homosexuality and mixes principles of Christianity with principles of secular humanism.

Rating:
Summary: Has Valid Points, But Gets Off Track
Review: Douglas tells the truth about American history when she reveals how black people were mistreated during slavery. This book shows that sexuality was used to oppress black people, the white culture exists only as the non-white culture is oppressed, day to day social struggles are a microcosm of the macrocosm (for example, "gangsta" rap is a response/result of dehumanizing social influences such as institutions and systems). But the book gets off track when Douglas condones homosexuality and mixes principles of Christianity with principles of secular humanism.

Rating:
Summary: Must Read!!
Review: I think I've recommended this great work to everyone I know.

This book should be a must read for all African American church members. It is challenging, provocative, and engaging. A work like this is the only way to begin the dialogue necessary to resurrect the dying Black Church.

Rating:
Summary: Foucault and the History of Black Sexuality
Review: Kelly Brown Douglass has written an excellent first chapter for her book Sexuality and th Black Church. What she has done here is to explain the relevance of using Michel Foucault as a tool to look at the history of black sexuality in the United States. Her basic argument is that black sexuality as we know it today is a fiction, a number of fictions (made of up numerous stereotypes), more or less derived, from what she calls White Culture. That Black sexuality has been a means to discipline and control black bodies. This book is commendable in that it dares to use Foucault and that it touches upon the personal in such aa way as to make all a bit uneasy --- black, white, male, female, heterosexual and homosexual. We all have a lot to learn from her analysis.